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Showing posts from January, 2017

A BTTI Post-Mortem - Part 2: Sketches from the Island

CH-CH-CHANGES The programme landed in our inboxes in mid-December to a mixed reaction. The schedule was substantially different from previous years: the shows (with the exception of the welcoming show) would start a lot earlier, and two out of three ‘activities with the band’ would take place afterwards. The activities would be Cards Against Humanity and Family Feud - i.e. different kind of party games to what some fans had been hoping for: sack races, egg and spoon races and other such games of the type I’d endured at church group trips in my childhood*. As we already knew, there would only be one ‘craft’ type of activity, tie dye, with a notable change: all three Hanson would take part at the same time. [*I believe these games, when forced upon an adult in the captive-like conditions of a youth camp or, equally, of all-inclusive vacation, openly contravene the Geneva Conventio n: Convention I: the Convention prohibits [...] assaults upon personal dignity.] The news about the ga

A BTTI 2017 Post-Mortem - Part 1: Dissecting the Shows

It was only going to be a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience: the solo sets had sold it to me, and besides, I’d never seen Hanson play with the full band. A one-off. Yes, it was only going to be a one-off. Well, that was 2015. On a grey and wet British New Year’s Day, I boarded a Jamaica-bound flight, ready to do it all again for the third time in 2017. Those who have read my blog posts from BTTI 2016 might remember that I wasn’t exactly awestruck by last year’s event: I’d found the shows lacking something, not to mention I'd been left seriously disappointed by Isaac’s solo set (for an Isaac ‘girl’, this is a serious matter). Aside from having fallen in love with Jamaica, I guess my mixed feelings about 2016 were part of the reason for wanting to go back: I had such fantastic memories of the 2015 shows in Cancun that I wanted another taste of that experience. I knew BTTI was more than a holiday with friends: it was a chance for me, as a European fan, to load up on Hanson conc